Impaired driver splashes urine, faces charges

April 1, 2014

By BILL POWELLHerald Staff Writer

JASPER — Police responding Monday night to the report of a possibly impaired driver in the city arrested a Dubois man who now faces five separate counts.

Information given to the Jasper Police Department at 8:20 p.m. said the possibly impaired driver was in a car heading south on Newton Street near Eighth Street. An officer then observed the 1995 Mercury Cougar being driven by Jeromy L. Perkins, 42, of 6220 N. State Road 545, Dubois, driving left of center while it was westbound on Sixth Street.

Police said the investigation that ensued after the traffic stop determined Perkins was intoxicated, based upon his failing standard field sobriety tests. Perkins refused to submit to a portable breath test and to a certified breath test, according to authorities.

When he was taken to Memorial Hospital for a blood draw, police said he urinated on himself and splashed the urine onto hospital staff. It was also determined that Perkins had never received a driver’s license and he had an open container of alcohol in his car at the time of the traffic stop.

Authorities booked Perkins into the Dubois County Security Center at 9:40 p.m. on a Class D felony count of battery by bodily fluid and misdemeanor counts of operating while intoxicated, OWI refusal, disorderly conduct and driving while having never been licensed.